ECM Your Information Overload

With data, communication and other content being key drivers in the management of an enterprise, the management, preservation, and access of such structured and unstructured content, often dispersed across ‘information silos’ becomes a vital concern. It comes as no surprise then, that Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has gained immense importance.

“There has been a growing awareness within the CXO community on the need to manage information through technology. Towards this end, organizations across the globe and from varied industries are using ECM to foster collaboration, implement vital process improvements and protect mission-critical information,” said Murray.

About its potential growth, he informed that analysts were forecasting a 15-20% compound annual growth rate in the global ECM market. Asked what was driving the market growth of ECM, Murray replied, “Approximately 80% of content on intranet and extranet is unstructured data consisting of business content such as documents, video, web pages and application code. Hence this growth is fuelled by the market’s growing acceptance that managing unstructured content effectively to achieve operational productivity and compliance.”

So how does a CIO/ CTO assess whether he is approaching the right ECM vendor? Murray suggested that, “A CIO should understand how they could customize ECM to their needs, rather than follow the flock. He should assess which product is most suitable to support his enterprise.”

“It is also important to project long-term requirements, as not all ECM capabilities can be added over time. It is also important to select vendors carefully,” he added.

In the highly competitive ECM space, Interwoven has adopted some unique strategies to stay in the vanguard.

“We have adopted the solution approach, which makes us a market leader in this space. After a thorough research on our customers we have found out that it is vital to customize the content according to industry need. Not only do we have pre-packaged customization solutions, we have sub-divided it into matter-centric collaboration, content provisioning solution and intranet management solution,” he explained.

Murray strongly feels that ECM is becoming the next wave of enterprise software. Moreover, CIOs are realizing that deploying ECM as a component in their enterprise-wide IT architectures can drive revenues and cut costs, he added.

The META group estimates that the global ECM market will reach $2.3 billion in software and $7 billion in services by 2007. A report by IDC estimated that the content management software market in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), stands at $102 million and is expected to grow at a five-year CAGR of 16.6% to cross $200 million by 2010. According to this report, India is poised to post the highest growth rate within the region at 27.7%, he informed.

About the new R&D facility in Bangalore, he commented, “India represents a vast market opportunity to capitalize on and we are delighted to strengthen this market through the opening of our new research and development facility.”

While many believe CIO's role is evolving and that he's occupying a key place in the boardroom, a recent study brings to light that more than half of the CIO, CTO or IT admin staff (55%) are not thanked by colleagues for carrying out essential IT tasks on their behalf.